IRVING LAYTON AND THE THEME OF DEATH

τ SEEMS GROSSLY CONTRADICTORY to associate a vigorous and volatile enfant terrible of Canadian letters with the subject of death in any remote way. Layton himself, however, is the first to admit that there is an obvious, profound and multi-faceted connection between death and the image of the sun which persistently and provocatively animates his poetry. The Layton individu-ality — his restless energy, his warrior words, strong verbs and startling metaphors, constantly wrestling with meaning, actively and obstinately as life itself, their "panache and chutzpa, " to quote one review of Selected Poems, is a function of his basic relationship as poet and man to the force of death. Strife, to adapt a comment of Kaufmann's upon Nietzsche, is a feature of his absolute. The con-stant tug of war between life and death, between creation and destruction is the very definition of life. Layton sees life as a series of contesting opposites, all varia-tions of the basic tension. Poetry is his expression of the contest, and he identifies poetry as "... an ironic balance of tensions."1 For Layton, the life force or crea-tive process is possible only through some form of death